Peculiar title, I know, but I’ll get to why it is like that in a second.

I’m going to use this space here to write a bit, if you all don’t mind. I’m going to write about a very important subject. That very important subject — Instagram, which by the way, gets a capital I because it is now a proper noun. Anyway, Instagram. So here goes. Instagram came along and as usual, I was ready to hate it. Why would I like something that other people like? Why would I do what other people did? Why would I join some kind of thing that other people had? How boring?

Let me get my philosophical objections to Instagram first of all. Photographically speaking, how hard it is to compose in a square? Instagram does all of the work for you. Composing in a rectangle, you have to be perfect all the time and you have more space to play with. Compose in a square and you have less space to play with and a better chance of getting a good photo. And those moronic filters. First, they are effects, not filters. I hate when people call them filters. A filter is a colored piece of glass that is placed on the front of a camera to change the contrast on a photo. Instagram’s “filters” are effects. They may highlight contrast but mostly they contribute to the uniformity of the photos. Oh look, my Eiffel tower looks like you Eiffel tower. Let’s be friends.

Now let’s talk about the psychological effects of Instagram. Before I got Instagram, I thought it was just a brag wire where people could talk about how great their lives were and how their sunsets were much more awesomer than my sunsets and their sushi just colored that much better than mine. But seriously. There is really the great danger of that. It is a danger. I recently read a story about a young college girl who kept comparing herself to what her friends were doing on Instagram and ended up committing suicide. I looked at her Instagram and I wanted to be her. She looked so happy.

OK, done preaching. Now I have Instagram and I’ve discovered that I get no great fits of envy from the thing. If anything, it is good to keep up with fashion designers I like, gymnasts and some celebrities. I don’t follow any Kardashians, but I do follow Scott Disick, because I am a glutton for punishment.

I also follow two hilarious pages. One is called “You Did Not Eat That” which shows skinny fashionista type people not eating things and I just followed another one called Satiregram. And this is how we tie back, in this late paragraph to the title. Satiregram is just an entire feed of written statements about all the banal shit that people post on their Instagram, me included. Sunsets, clouds, fireworks, food, dogs, etc. All there. Hence my title. I was photographing some yellow flowers today and I thought “how banal is this?” Just some flowers. I mean yeah, beautiful, but not beautiful like the Keytar bear or a man wearing a gorilla mask yelling “Free Tom Brady.” Not that kind of beautiful. Just like normal level of beautiful.

Satire-gram satirical if you will. Yellow flowers. You know yellow flowers thrown off center from the cliche machine I carry with me every day: